


secondhand rapture

by nefelokokkygia



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nefelokokkygia/pseuds/nefelokokkygia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>hard to believe</i>
  <br/>
  <i>you could cause me harm</i>
  <br/>
  <i>this could cause me harm</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	secondhand rapture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nayanroo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/gifts).



> written and titled to the MS MR album _secondhand rapture_

 

_nights like this i become afraid  
of the darkness in my heart_

*

When Loki is wide-eyed and young Frigg sits him and Thórr upon her knee, the glittering runes of their ancient tongue spread out before them as she reads. She tells them of the Beginning, when darkness reigned before the coming of the light, when the Great _Móðir_ was born from the first stars whose beams spread out like Branches across the empty universe. The Queen reads to them of the creation of the Nine Realms, formed from the icy waters of Yggdrasill and the fiery cores of her stars; Loki turns their names over in his teeth, _Niflheimr_ and _Múspellsheimr_ , repeating after Frigg and she praises him as his brother traces the shining words with his finger.

To _Ásgarðr_ she is Queen, but to Loki she is _Móðir_ , gentle and firm and sweet and safe, the Branches glittering in her eyes and the stars flickering in the spells in her palms. There is ice in her teeth and the glint of her jewels, and there is fire in her heart and the curve of her arms around him when she presses kisses to his forehead. Frigg carries worlds in the threads of her gowns and the silence of her footsteps, and Loki thinks she is not unlike _Yggdrasill_ herself when she calls his name.

 

When he is older and his limbs do not yet fit his frame she comes to him, her hair woven gold around the line of her jaw and the weight of a kingdom spread out over her shoulders. Óðinn spends most of his time with Thórr now, grooming his firstborn for the burden of the throne and the weight of the hammer forged for his hands. Loki has always been fonder of Frigg, closer to his mother and the whisper of her spells that run through his veins, her secrets and tricks light in his palms like air and blood and all the things that bore from her to make him in her image. She tells him that his brother will soon take up the hammer, that the _Alföðr_ will give him dominion over storms and command of Thunder, and Loki is silent. The crash of Thunder and the heat of lightning is everything in his brother’s voice and the marks his nails leave in his palms, the second prince thinks, and he asks of his own Gifting.

“Your _faðir_ has chosen for your _bróðir_ ,” Frigg smiles, her teeth icy and her eyes shining. “But I will choose for you.

She honors him with magick and Mischief, slipping with him between the Branches to the waters of the Beginning, and when Loki drinks them in, the worlds settle themselves at his feet.

 

When his brother’s coronation looms over the horizon, Loki is visited by the Queen beneath the Branches, the slick-slide of the colors of the cosmos vivid above them. Her furs are pulled tight around her shoulders and her eyes are dark and deep, and he asks her if she thinks Thórr is ready. Her silence speaks the volumes her voice does not, and her hand covers his on the railing of the balcony that overlooks the palace’s inner city.

“Watch over him”, Frigg asks, and in that moment she is not his Queen but his mother, and he wonders if she knows what she is asking of him.

“He will be my king before I am his _bróðir_ ,” Loki replies. “I cannot be keeper to both.”

“You were his _bróðir_ first,” she reminds him. “He will always need you, just as I will.”

He presses a kiss to her hand before he leaves, and her words leave claw-marks in his mind where his faith could have been.  
  


*

_dig up her bones but leave the soul alone  
let her find her way to a better place_

*  
  


Sif is small and soft when she climbs her father’s chair, her face reflected in the shining steel of his sword as he polishes the worn metal before the hearth. Her hair is black like her mother’s, curving around her cheeks and held in place with cords of leather and silver pins; she does not mind her mother’s adornments, but the desire to pull them out and shake them from her head burns like the flames that warm her. Týr turns the sword every which way, smoothing liquid and cloth over the sharp edges and slick surfaces, and the stinging smell of polish is lightning in the air in a way that does not scare her like the real thing does. Her father is home and comfort in ways her mother is not, and when he gathers her into his arms the scent of ash and steel welcomes her.

“ _Faði_ , teach me,” she wants, her little fingers slipping over the gold of the hilt, and he does.

 

Her mother does not approve of her desire to become a shieldmaiden, to someday cut her hair short and bind her chest and wear the garments of men, but her stubborn streak is painted like her father’s, and her mother relents. They agree that she also learn the crafts of the home, but sewing and gowns and the wiles of the Court do nothing for Sif, and she learns only to despise them, counting down the hours until she can yank away the cords of her dresses and rip the stocks from her legs, tossing the pins from her hair and taking up the wooden shield and sword with which her father learned. It’s not that she hates her mother, far from it; she cannot hate the woman who gave birth to her, who wrapped her in furs in the heart of winter and told her tales of the Nine Realms when their wars took her father from them time and again.

But Sif wishes her mother would understand that she is also her father’s daughter, that her love of swordplay and battle and honor in the name of _Ásgarðr_ is what her father has left to her when war takes him for the final time. Her mother cries, for her lost husband and her daughter she may someday lose, but Sif does not stand down. If she dies for the glory of _Ásgarðr_ then so be it; it will be an end worthy of all the seats in _Valhöll_ , of all the places she will find her father again.

“You gave me life,” Sif tells her mother when the last fires of Týr’s pyre have gone out, when her father is ash in her mouth and the glimmer of the sword at her hip. “But _faðir_ gave me a reason for it.”

 

Sif hits the ground hard, the leather and metal of her armor digging into the creases of her arms and the spaces of her ribs. She spits dust from her teeth and wipes the blood from her eyes, feeling it drip from a cut on her forehead but ignoring it, picking up her practice sword and pushing herself to her feet. The cold of winter bites clean to her bones but she pays it no mind, listening only to the commands of the drill instructors and the sound of metal clanging in the snowfall.

This time her aim is true, and her opponent tumbles to the ground as she whips her windswept hair from her face, meeting the eyes of the crown prince beneath her. He gives her a lopsided smile as she offers her hand, and he takes it as she pulls him to his feet.

“Perhaps you should go up against my _bróðir_ , Sif,” Thórr says between breaths, wiping sweat and dirt from his eyes and motioning to the stairs behind them. “You seem like you could use a challenge.” She laughs, the sound harsh, sheathing her blade and pushing her hair out of her face.

“If he ever wishes to come down from his perch and try me, I would gladly accept,” the warrior yells to no one in particular, loud enough for Loki to hear as she turns to meet his gaze.

He watches her from the balcony above, but his ice-chipped eyes do not faze her, and she smirks; shieldmaidens are few and far between but they are not unheard of, and she lets the points of her teeth show in the setting sun like a challenge. The younger prince raises a brow before he turns to leave, and Sif swallows down the heat in her throat, itching on her tongue.

  
*

_moving space but not in time  
choices made but nothing's right_

*  
 

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Loki breathes, running his tongue over the points of her teeth, tasting salt and sweat and sex on her skin. His hands fumble with the straps of her armor, yanking at the leather that keeps her braces and plates fastened over cloth to her skin as he presses her against the walls of her chambers.

We _really_ shouldn’t be doing this-” the prince continues, until a bite from the warrior silences his half-hearted protests, her tongue licking the sensitive skin where his neck and shoulder meet hidden beneath his high collar.

“Shut _up_ ,” Sif hisses, wrenching aside the leather and gold around his neck, mentally cursing the stiff material and decadent adornments the prince insists on wearing. “Less talking, more _fucking_ ,” she growls, undoing the clasp of his outer coat and pulling it down his shoulders, tossing it on the floor to be forgotten. The warrior sheds the braces on her arms, the sound of steel and gold clattering like lightning in their ears as they remove every piece of her armor and let it fall to the plush carpet beneath their feet. She wrenches his tunic out of his pants, dragging her short nails down his sides and laughing against his lips as he groans against her mouth.

‘As my Lady commands,” he breathes, and Sif likes the way lady feels on his teeth when she licks their edges, white and sharp and dangerous.

(Like herself, like him, like this thing they have only just begun.)

He pulls her away from the dark curtains and icy stone, turning to toss her on the large bed in the center of his bedroom, crawling over the warrior’s heated, hungry form as her fingers trace lightning through his hair, nails prickling the back of his neck, and Sif laughs. Loki tugs her leggings from her skin, making a home between her legs, and when she flips him over to ride him she is a universe of her own, like the Beginning, fire and ice and creating stars behind his eyes, setting worlds at his feet.

They are young and restless and the waters of _Yggdrasill_ pool between Sif's legs and glimmer through Loki's veins, and they both know they will end as they began, in steel and the slick-slide of water in their throats. He is a prince, she is a warrior, and there are things greater than themselves that they will learn to let go of.

(It isn’t love, but it isn’t nothing, and for now it will be enough.)

   
*

_pressure of the future, too much for today  
how many hours will i let slip away_

*  
  


The night before she is inducted into the ranks of Óðinn’s best soldiers, she goes to Loki, slipping silently through the large halls of the royal family’s sanctuary, the simple pendant he had enchanted for her held tight in her palm beneath her heavy cloak as she steps unseen past the guards. _It’s not that they would forbid you entrance_ , the Keeper of Mischief had told her, _but they will talk, and the_ Alföðr _will hear_.

They both know better than to believe that she would lose her title to the whispers of jealous soldiers, but where Sif is brazen and headstrong and would throw open the doors to his chambers when she wished, Loki has convinced her to let him be wary, and if runes and spells will calm him then she will let them be.

She taps once on his door, their signal, and soon the heavy gold parts for her as she moves toward the Trickster’s bed, throwing off her robe and burying herself in silk and furs and the wintry scent of magick that seeps into everything Loki touches. She yanks him down by his collar when he returns from the doorway, pressing her lips to his, heated and heavy and hungry.

“Do you not wish to sleep before your Gifting tomorrow?” he asks, fingers spread wide between her shoulder blades, pulling her closer. “War is a heavy burden, even upon armored shoulders.”

“War made my _faðir_ and so it has made me,” Sif replies, shoving Loki to the sheets and crawling over him. “There is nothing I would not give for the glory of Ásgarðr.” At her words the second prince’s eyes narrow, his fingers tracing the hard lines of muscle and bone down her back, and though Sif is no Trickster herself she is not blind to the threads tangled within his chest, seeping into his skin.

This does not please you,” she says, more a statement than a question, and her eyes meet his, unblinking.

“It is not my place to tell you what you can and cannot do; I would be a fool otherwise” Loki begins, curling a strand of her hair, now grown long again, around his finger. “But this,” and he gestures to her naked form draped over his, her finger tracing patterns over his chest, “this cannot continue forever. You will be the Lady Sif who holds dominion over War, and I the second prince who will keep my oaf of a _bróðir_ in line.”

“We have always know that, from the very beginning,” Sif counters, and she can still feel the cold surface of his chamber walls upon her back and his first kisses on her teeth, even now. “Nothing of that has changed, and nothing will.”

“Everything will change, Sif. That is the only thing we have ever known.”

   
*

_it's all gonna shift  
it's out of our hands_

*

   
Sif is crowned the keeper of War, her place amongst _Ásgarðr_ ’s finest secure and known, and when Thórr’s coronation is announced soon after, she begins to notice.

She knows Loki has always been jealous of his brother, his brother who has taken up the hammer and will soon take up the throne, the golden child and the favored son, and she knows it stings him like summer thorns. When her days are not occupied by training at the grounds or instructing in the camps she finds him, brooding and dark like the ravens that perch on the balconies, the _Alföðr_ ’s eyes when he cannot be there to see. The lines of his face are shadowed and the curve of his shoulders is low, and it seems that even the gold threaded into his collar does not shine with the stars that once filled his eyes.

“ _Móðir_ asked me to watch over him,” Loki tells her in the nights before the ceremony, when his armor shines like fire in the light of his rooms, and the glint of his horns burns behind Sif’s eyes.

“He is your _bróðir_ Loki,” she says, leaning into his touch as he lazily braids her dark hair. “And soon he will be our king; it is a great responsibility the Queen has asked of you.”

“It is nothing I haven’t already done for centuries,” he spits angrily, and his grip on her hair tightens ever so.

“You would be his adviser, would you not?”

“I would be his _babysitter_ ,” Loki hisses. “There are whispers in the court that he is still too young for the throne, too brash and bull-headed to rule with a steady hand. Even _móðir_ does not believe he is truly ready, but _Ragnarǫk_ will come before Óðinn gives the crown to his Trickster son.” Sif narrows her eyes, even as she recalls years of wandering eyes and hushed words in disdain for his spells, for his slender arms and raven hair that glimmer in the darkness where his brother shines in the light.

“You learned your magick from the Queen,” Sif counters, the prince’s hands falling from her braided hair as she turns to face him. “I do not think the _Alföðr_ would think so low of it when she led you to the Great _Móðir_ ’s waters herself.”

“Magick and Mischief have no place in the rule of realms, my Lady,” he says, the words dripping from his teeth like ice, and Sif shivers from more than just the cold and snow that flicker in through his curtains.  
  


*

_hard to believe_   
_you could cause me harm_   
_this could cause me harm_

*

   
The _Jǫtnar_ attack on the morning of Thórr’s coronation, cutting the ceremony short and ending in the prince’s banishment to _Miðgarðr_ , and in hindsight, Sif can see the world as it unravels at the seams.

There is no fear in her heart when the Giants come; War is her domain and Death walks at her feet, and she cannot be afraid of the things that beat in her heart and bristle in her bones. But there is anger, and she is very angry. She knows that following the Giants to _Jötunheimr_ is enough to warrant the _Alföðr_ ‘s rage, enough to spark the War that prickles in her skin with every prayer for victory and every cry for battle that echoes through the stars. But Thórr is her friend and her blood-brother in arms, and she will not stop until she has silenced all who would threaten her future king on this day.

Sif’s eyes meet Loki’s as they dress for the icy realm that sits far below _Ásgarðr_ in the hold of _Yggdrasill_ , and in them there are too many things for her to name even one. He is guarded and tense, on edge like an animal in the shade of contempt, cornered in the shadows with only teeth and claws to protect him.

(She should have seen it coming, should have known that the Trickster would not raise his hackles to a danger not there, and when the shieldmaiden lies silent at night, these are the things that keep her awake.)

When they return shaken and shattered from the jaws of the beast they have awoken, and the _Alföðr_ has cast down his firstborn heir, Sif clenches her sharpened teeth and narrows her eyes, but she says nothing. What Thorr asked them to do was dangerous, but each of them went with steady hands and willing hearts; but Sif knows there is no reasoning, only what has been done and when her eyes trace the curve of Loki’s shoulders they are proud, low, the edge of a horizon over which she cannot see.

(But now how she wishes she could.)

Loki is limned in gold and lined in shadow in their halls, and even as he proclaims his love for his brother there are cracks in his words, spaces between his tongue that drip with the lies over which he holds domain. He has always been jealous of Thórr, the shieldmaiden had told the Warriors Three after he had slipped back into the shadows he loves, but when _betrayal_ flickers in her companions’ eyes, she is loathe to drink it down her throat, and the words catch in her lungs, choking her from the inside.  
  


*

_so who'll swear i am up to no good  
i'd get out now, if i were you i would_

*  
  


Sif does not see Loki again until Frigg crowns him in his brother’s stead, Óðinn deep in sleep and _Ásgarðr_ on the brink of War. It thrums in her veins and bites at her ankles, and though she would be the first to set foot in the War Room and mark her enemies for death, this does not feel right. It’s not that she doesn't think Laufey-King does not deserve punishment for what he has done, but _betrayal_ and _brother_ and _Loki_ sting like thorns in her mind.

( _Everything will change, Sif. That is all we have ever known_.)

The shieldmaiden had paced her chambers, the clink of her armor loud in her ears and the corners of her walls, and Loki had formless in her mind, ever-changing and always just beyond her reach. Loki may have her body and her bed, but Thor has her heart, because _Ásgarðr_ has her heart, her soul and every breath she takes would be her last for her kingdom if it needed her so.

“This ends here,” she had told the Warriors Three, and she did not need their words to know they felt the same.

When they set foot in the throne room, Loki’s horns like daggers above the golden dais, the words that choked her throat settle deep in her belly like stone. Where there was once something in his eyes for her, for them, for _Ásgarðr_ , now there is nothing, and it does not hit Sif with the force she expects.

 _Because I was expecting exactly this_ , she thinks, and the reality of them is smaller than it has ever been. Loki’s voice is razor-sharp between his teeth, pride seeps from his palms and pools at his feet, and when he lowers his horns to her she rises to meet them.

 _This cannot continue forever_ , Loki’s earlier words burn behind her eyes, and she smirks as she turns her back on the Silvertongue.

Of all the lies that have dripped from his teeth, there is still room enough for one last truth.

   
*

_your own worst enemy_   
_you only picked me up to bring me down_   
_down, down, down, down_

*  
  


“Thórr, your _faðir_ still lives,” Sif tells him, and the prince is wide-eyed and weary at her words. In his eyes she sees all that Loki has done, and all the things that have bitten into her skin beneath the stars. Loki is Serpent-Tongue and Liar-King to her now, a traitorous son and the memory of his tongue on her teeth is like poison, viscous and slick and suffocating.

“Óðinn still lives, and my _bróðir_ has sent the Destroyer to end us,” the blond says, meant for himself but heard by those around him.

“I do not think Loki is your _bróðir_ anymore,” Fandral says, and Sif can see the pushpullshove in Thórr’s eyes, in his heart of hearts, _brother_ and _betrayal_ in orbit around him, like opposing poles of a magnet that not even the strongest forces can make meet.

“He will always be my _bróðir_ ,” the Keeper of Thunder counters. “And that is why he does what he has.”

Sif raises her sword, for her home and her heart and for all the things that have brought her to this day, and she is steel unbound, unbroken, and she rips apart what Loki has undone at the seams.  
  


*

_i have this dream where i cut out my tongue  
so i can't make promises that can never be done_

*  
  


Loki falls, but Sif’s tears do not.

The funeral feast they hold for Loki is grand, befitting a prince of _Ásgarðr_ (and _Jötunheimr_ , Sif reminds herself, watching the flames flicker in the gold that decorates the halls and flickers amidst the brocades of green, only now realizing there was so much more to the ice in his teeth and the cracks of the Branches in his eyes); for all the wrong he has done his home-not-home, the whispers against him have turned to laughter and light, and Sif is reminded of the slippery tongues that spoke daggers behind her back even as Óðinn crowned her with the honor of War.

 _Only for death do they find the courage to be cowards_ , Sif thinks, and every gaze that turns her way she meets with daggers of her own, pointed and curved in cruelty. What she feels (felt? To Sif this funeral is as much a lie as those that have spilled from the Trickster’s teeth) for Loki is for her to know and for others to keep their wagging tongues in check, but she will not let them drag his name into the dirt when they have already done the same to her for lesser things.

 _They forget they have come from the Great Móðir with their own crimes, splattered upon their hearts like blood from the wounds they have drawn_ , Sif thinks. _I would pardon Loki a thousand times over before I allow them to believe they have done the same._

The warrior leaves the feast before anyone else, and when Frigg puts a hand on her shoulder, knowing, Sif closes her eyes. She slips silently from the halls, exactly as she came.

 

When she lies awake at night, feeling the ghost of his hands on her hips and holding the glimmering gold of the pendant he enchanted for her in her palm, Sif thinks of how she and Loki began, and she wonders how they will end.

She does not believe he is dead; she carries Death at her feet, and Loki has not bitten at the spaces of her ankles like those who have fallen beneath her hand, who have returned to Yggdrasill to begin again.

She wonders where he is, and if she can forgive him for all the wrongs he has done, but mostly for falling away; at least in death, they would both be at peace.  
  


*

_i found you in pieces you'd been torn apart  
a million one reasons to end before you start_

*  
  


Loki returns to _Ásgarðr_ with Thórr, wrists bound and tongue silent, and there is nothing in Sif’s heart when the guards deliver her the news.

(But _oh_ it is a lie, all of it is a filthy, liquid lie, there is everything in her heart come undone at the seams but Loki has let enough lies drip from his mouth, and the warrior tells herself that for once, she deserves to spit some of her own.)

“Come to laugh, Sif?” the Trickster asks from the bone-white of his cell, teeth bared and eyes betraying all the things that stir like dragons in his heart, and Sif might have pitied him in a different life, in the time before. But this is her life, his life, their life now, and she’s not sure what she feels for him, this shadow of the man she has never quite been able to love, but whom she has always been able to follow.

“I would speak with you,” the warrior says, her voice like a snarl in her throat. “But not in front of the filth that surrounds you,” and she casts pinpoint eyes to the other prisoners, her sword flickering in her hand.

“Still as shameless as ever, my Lady,” Loki remarks, and what magick is allowed him settles over the cell, hiding them both from view as Sif touches her fingertips to the barrier that separates them, gliding through the glassy liquid and into the furnished cage.

( _But Lady Sif, he is a prisoner, you cannot be alone with him; there is no telling what he would attempt do to you_ , the guards had pleaded with her, but War nips at their heels and wraps around their ankles, trailing behind the shieldmaiden as she parted them with a hand.

 _He will do what he has always done: exactly what I say_.)

“You know me better than to think I pay attention to what worms say of me,” she replies with ice in her teeth and Death at her feet, and she tosses her sword to the floor, the clattering of steel echoing even in the close space of the cell.

“Then why come to the dungeons to visit me, Liartongue and World-Destroyer? Surely the Lady Sif, the _Móðir_ of War,” and the words are hissed in his throat, “would not wish to sully her hands with something so beneath her?” His eyes do not leave hers, even as she undoes the leather straps of her armor, allowing the pieces to clatter to the floor with her sword.

“A century or two of sharing a bed with the _Faðir_ of Lies has made me a little,” and she pauses, letting the last of her clothing slip from her hips, “dirty.” Loki swallows, his cat-thin eyes trailing down her body, and the shieldmaiden narrows her eyes, the points of her teeth bare around her tongue.

And if there are any of _Yggdrasill_ ’s waters left in you, perhaps I will come out of this clean.”

Sif wonders if fucking a traitor is a treachery of her own, but Loki still tastes of stars and gold and the sharpness of the horns that crowned him when he breaks beneath her, of the things that once defined him and may define him still, and she drinks him all in, almost enough to choke.  
  


*

_the things i feel now i never thought i'd find  
i wonder if our future was written in our past_

*  
  


“If you betray him, I _will_ kill you.”

Her sword is sharp beneath his chin, glazed over his jugular and all she need do is flick her wrist, and the Keeper of Mischief would be no more.

He laughs, and the sound is like the cut of a dagger through flesh, liquid and visceral and hollow. Sif thinks of the times she visited his cell, ripping pleasure from his throat like her sword from the still-warm bodies of the battlefield, and she does not think they are so different.

And perhaps that is what makes it alright that she parts the guards of the dungeons with her sword, slipping silent through the liquid of his cell to rip his tattered clothes from his skin and fucking him until the skies aren't the only thing filled with stars; maybe she’s killing him a little bit at a time, their past a blade wrenched between his ribs that their future rips out a little more with every slip of her tongue over his teeth and twist of his fingers in her hair.

 

She is thankful she does not have to kill him, but whether it is because he is already dead or that it could be another lie viscous from his tongue, she is not sure. Sif does not weep for him, because she cannot say if there was anything to grieve from the start.

 _We were young and restless and foolish to think that we could swim against the waters that have made and borne us from the Great_ Móðir _’s arms_ , the shieldmaiden thinks, when Thórr has returned to refuse the throne and Óðinn has lost both of his sons to things greater than the rule of a kingdom on the edge of its horizon.

_Everything will change, Sif._

_And so it has_ , she tells Loki who is gone again, and he is liquid in her mind like the lies he has told, like the things they had once begun, like herself, like all the things that are not love, but may have been.  
  


*

_this isn't control  
this isn't control_

*  
  


Her sword is heavy in her hands, Loki’s lies are slick and pooled at her feet like the waters of _Yggdrasill_ , dripping from the golden throne before her, and Sif rises to meet the one lie the Keeper of Mischief could never tell.

_Everything will change, Sif._

And so it does.

**Author's Note:**

> notes would give me away, but you fuckers already know who i am
> 
> may write more to up the rating later


End file.
